[Elvis]

http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/m ... 05a4f.html

Mississippi rising: Will it reach the football stadium site?

David Hunn

ST. LOUIS • It’s business as usual at Sonn Signs this week, despite the rising Mississippi River.

John Reinsch, operations manager at his family’s sign-making company, said he didn’t expect floodwater to creep into their old brick warehouse on downtown’s north riverfront. And it hasn’t.

The building sits inside the footprint for the proposed football stadium, and just a few dozen feet from the river. Residents and football fans here have long worried what a flood would bring to the stadium site.

But, so far, the city’s thick concrete floodwall is holding the river at bay.

The Mississippi is expected to crest Thursday in downtown St. Louis at 42.5 feet, nearly 13 feet over flood stage. On Wednesday morning, the river had risen to the base of the wall. The other side was pocked with wide mud puddles. In spots, water had slipped under flood gates. But the buildings and roads were far from flooded.

Dave Peacock, co-chairman of the state task force planning the new stadium, said the football field itself would sit even higher than the top of the floodwall.

Eli Hoisington, an HOK architect leading the design of the new stadium, said the team has planned for the lowest level of the new stadium to be five feet higher than the peak of the 1993 flood. Moreover, he said, the design allows for added provisions to further protect the stadium should the river rise higher than 1993 levels.

“The waters at their peak this week could rise an additional 10 feet and the proposed new stadium would remain dry, safe, and strong,” Hoisington said in an email.

The land there, north of the Lumière Place Casino, rises sharply from the river.

The base of the Cotton Belt Building, for instance — which also sits partially in the proposed stadium footprint — is many feet higher than the entrance to the Sonn Signs building.

As the river rose in 1993, Reinsch said, he walked an extension ladder up to the flood wall, and looked over the edge. The Mississippi was just 2 feet, maybe even 18 inches, from the top of the wall.

He hasn’t looked, yet, this year.

[ramsfan1977]

I think so.

[Hacksaw]

The City of Angels has connections. And they want their Rams.